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Any hopes of policy support for the rand from the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) have vanished. The currency fell 1 percent after yesterday’s SARB meeting where Governor Gill Marcus made it clear she would not be standing in the way of the rand’s move south. It is now trading at 9.32 per dollar.

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We’re at risk of labouring this point, but there has been some more evidence that this year’s equity rally has not been spurred by a shift away from fixed income. The latest data from our corporate cousins at Lipper offer pretty definitive proof that there has been no Great Rotation, at least not from bonds to stocks.

Total returns on emerging market local currency bonds dipped into the red for the first time this year, according to data from JPMorgan which compiles the flagship GBI-EM global diversified index of domestic emerging debt. While the EMBI Global index of sovereign dollar debt has already taken a hit the rise in U.S. yields, local bonds’ problems are down to how EM currencies are performing against the dollar.

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Sterling looks likely to be one of this year’s big G10 currency casualties (the other being yen). Having lost 7 percent against the dollar and 5.5 percent to the euro so far this year on fear of a British triple-dip recession, sterling probably has further to fall. (see here for my colleague Anirban Nag’s take on sterling’s outlook).

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Over the past few years we’ve become used to the global economy resting on a knife-edge. So when dramatic events like the levy on bank deposits in Cyprus happen we wait for the dominoes to fall. Two days on we’re still waiting…

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With rising U.S. Treasury yields posing a threat to emerging debt. JP Morgan is now advising investors to cut holdings of sovereign dollar bonds to marketweight from overweight. And it suggests doing that by reducing exposure to the riskiest (and usually the highest-yielding) emerging markets, listed on its NEXGEM sub-index.